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Author ORCID Identifier
N/A
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
English
Year Degree Awarded
2014
Month Degree Awarded
February
First Advisor
Donna LeCourt
Second Advisor
Anne Herrington
Third Advisor
Jon Olsen
Subject Categories
Other Rhetoric and Composition | Rhetoric
Abstract
This dissertation takes up a question posed by Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford in 2009: “In a world of participatory media—of Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Twitter, and Del.icio.us—what relevance does the term audience hold?” Using a case study methodology (e.g., Dyson and Genishi; Stake; Yin), I examine how three popular internet writers—all writers who engage with political issues in different venues—conceptualize their audiences and respond to audience feedback. Using established scholarship about audience, including Ede and Lunsford’s work, as well as newer digital scholarship (e.g., Arola, Carnegie, Edbauer Rice), I extend the existing conversation on audience to the context of digital textual production. Rather than understanding participatory audiences as monolithic, my dissertation breaks up the concept of participation in order to represent its dynamic effects on the broader notion of audience. Drawing upon my case studies of current web writers, I introduce three important concepts: audience emerging, audience managed, and audience oriented. The first, audience emerging, shows us the unexplored relationship between Ede and Lunsford’s canonical terms, addressed and invoked. Understanding the nature of this oscillating relationship situates writer awareness of audience as an emerging, recursive process, much like other elements in the contemporary understanding of the writing process. Audience managed illuminates ways that a web-writer can marshal members into a community and initiate discursive norms. Her writing in this community, funneled through the template, then creates the community’s expectations and conventions. Audience oriented shows the ways in which a writer can guide their audience toward the formation of a public. Overall, this research highlights the way writers imagine and experience their audience in ongoing, continuous ways.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/5735805.0
Recommended Citation
Gallagher, John R., "Interactive Audience and the Internet" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 190.
https://doi.org/10.7275/5735805.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/190